


dramatis personae

by Solovei



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: 5 Things, Character Study, Definitely not enough to get an M rating don't worry, Feat. accurate russian nicknames and dimunitives!, Gen, Getting Together, Implied Sexual Content, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Mentioned Nikolai Plisetsky, Mentioned Victor Nikiforov, My First Work in This Fandom, Names, POV Yuri Plisetsky, Phone Calls & Telephones, Some headcanons about Yuri's family also, Vignette, in a weird abstract sense, it's all very abstract, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 09:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20061526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solovei/pseuds/Solovei
Summary: On names and naming.





	dramatis personae

**I.**

He is _Yuriy Aleksandrovich Plisetskiy_ in his passport, formal and practiced, like a tie done up too tight. It makes sense, in some twisted bitter way, that all his father would leave him is a name.

He doesn’t even remember what the bastard looks like. Once, he goes digging around in the cardboard box where his grandfather kept important documents. There, in between various pieces of paper bearing Important Calligraphy and Official Seals, he finds a picture of his mother wearing a heavy winter coat and smiling next to a man with glasses. On the back, in blue pen smudged by time, is a caption: “Katya and A., 2001” 

This is different from all the other pictures he’s seen. There are plenty of him as a baby with his grandparents and his mother (the latter becoming an increasingly rare sight as you flip through the albums), but this - this is the first time he had seen this man. 

Was this “A” the man who gave him his name? He looks at the man’s face, trying to find some familiar features, a resemblance to his own face, but soon he hears the key turning in the front door and angrily shoves the box away. 

**II.**

He is “Yura” at summer training camp, the barest form of familiarity, one single step off from calling him by his full name. It is a far cry from the familiar, clear ring of “Yurik” he got at his rink back in Moscow, where he’d been a regular since kindergarden, and even further from the home-scented “Yurachka” of his Grandfather, heavy with the memories of fogged-up kitchen windows and watching the Olympics on TV. During their weekly phone call, he tries his best to sound excited and enthusiastic, talking about how much the coaches praised him, how hard he was working.

He doesn't spend a lot of time socializing with other skaters; alone in a new city, he realizes he doesn’t know how to go about making friends that don’t happen to already come pre-installed in his life. And anyway, he doesn’t have time. He’s here to be a champion, no matter how exhausting and painful that road is.

Eyes fixed on his goal, he doesn’t look away long enough to notice the slightly older boy they call “Otabek”.

**III.**

He is “Yuri” to Katsudon and the other people he meets in Japan, a strange sound that is almost his name but not exactly. But it’s _just _close enough to his full name that part of him thinks everyone is mad at him all the time, or he’s trapped in an endless press conference. 

It’s worse when they decide to slap an _o_ at the end, at which point he doesn’t even want to dignify it with a response. Victor starts doing it too, and he feels betrayed - really, Victor should know better. He should be on his side here, right? He _promised_, after all. The only person even remotely like him in this strange foreign country, and here he was, mocking his name like the rest of them. 

**IV.**

He is “Yuraaaaaaaa”, the vowel trailing off into a sigh coming from the speaker of his phone, Otabek’s picture on the screen. Even 4600 kilometers away, their exhaustion is parallel after days of practice and school and whatever else. Sometimes Otabek listens to him complain for hours, sometimes he talks about his family and his training, and sometimes they just lie there without saying anything, listening to each other's breaths. 

Why is it that his name, when Otabek says it, sounds so different? He starts to treasure the sound of his name on Otabek’s lips, more than a judge announcing off scores, more than a TV feature or the rare praise from Lilia. It’s not just the accent either, there’s something… awe-struck about it, like Otabek can’t believe he’s actually talking to him, even as their calls increase in frequency and duration and Yakov makes an official rule banning all cell phones during practice. 

**V.**

He is “Yurka” in the arrivals area of Almaty Airport, said through a crooked smile, hidden behind a knowing nod and unreadable eyes. He tries to look aloof and nonchalant, but it doesn’t work, he’s too happy to see him.

He is silent as the taxi glides through unfamiliar streets, watching signs in a language he can’t read, but the driver asks them the address in Russian, so he feels a little less lost. 

He is a jumble of hands and lips and teeth and muscle as soon as they enter Otabek’s apartment, hungry for contact and short on patience. He tries to remember everything, the way it smells, the sounds of the street, the tidy row of sneakers and boots by the door. 

He commits to memory the way the bed creaks when he pushes Otabek onto it, too.

Now he is soft breaths becoming faster, he is limbs and eyes and fingers in hair. 

“Say my name, Beka--” 

Otabek does. He calls him Yura, Yurik, Yurka, _zhanym_ \- and on his lips it becomes ethereal, a magic word that opens a secret garden; he says it again and again and he knows he will never get tired of hearing it. 

**Author's Note:**

> "zhanym" means "my soul" in Kazakh! I was looking around for possible pet names for Otabek to use around Yuri and found a great [post](https://sawyer-aik.tumblr.com/post/154282821426/kazakhstan-101-or-how-to-otabek) on tumblr that lists some alternatives :) Plugging it here so hopefully someone else can find it helpful too!


End file.
